Exclude methods from code coverage with Cobertura

Is there a way to exclude code from inclusion into Cobertura coverage reports? We have some methods that should not be included in the coverage report and therefore not drive down the coverage numbers.

I know that Clover has such a functionality, but I have not found anything similar for Cobertura.

You can exclude classes from instrumentation. Then they should not appear on reports. See exclude statements below.

You can also ignore calls to some methods. See ignore statement below.

If you are using maven, see maven plugin manual.

    <configuration>
      <instrumentation>
        <ignores>
          <ignore>com.example.boringcode.*</ignore>
        </ignores>
        <excludes>
          <exclude>com/example/dullcode/**/*.class</exclude>
          <exclude>com/example/**/*Test.class</exclude>
        </excludes>
      </instrumentation>
    </configuration>

And for ant see this.

<cobertura-instrument todir="${instrumented.dir}">
  <ignore regex="org.apache.log4j.*" />
  <fileset dir="${classes.dir}">
    <include name="**/*.class" />
    <exclude name="**/*Test.class" />
  </fileset>
  <fileset dir="${jars.dir}">
    <include name="my-simple-plugin.jar" />
  </fileset>
</cobertura-instrument>

This has been breaking my head for some time now.

My problem was that I had the cobertura maven plugin setup in the reporting section instead of the build section.

The instrumentation settings, and hence the excluding of classes or packages, won't be applied if you don't set it up on build section, so watch out for this.